West Ham Cemetery (London)

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West Ham Burial Board was set up in the 1850s and in 1857 it purchased 12 acres of land for the new cemetery from Samuel Gurney, of the Quaker family and related to the prison reformer Elizabeth Fry. The cemetery was subsequently extended to its current size in 1871. The emphasis was on creating good drainage and keeping costs low so the cemetery's layout is a simple grid plan. It retains its small ragstone chapel but its Non-Conformist chapel has since been demolished. A small mock-Tudor lodge building is situated just inside the metal entrance gates.
There are no prominent monuments and gravestones are set among grass. The fairly low brick wall which forms the boundary with the adjacent West Ham Jewish Cemetery allows views between the two, and both cemeteries are surrounded by suburban housing. Among those buried here are 2 people who died when the Princess Alice pleasure boat sank in the Thames near Beckton in 1878 killing 550 people, and 2 firemen killed in 1917 when the TNT plant of the Brunner Mond chemical works in Silvertown exploded. Victims of both of these disasters are also buried in East London Cemetery.

Cemetery Road,
Forest Gate
London E7